Australian astronomers celebrate special star

Related Stories

Astronomers are celebrating the discovery of the thousandth pulsar known to science, spotted recently by the CSIRO's radio telescope in Parkes.

The telescope, in western NSW, is the undisputed world leader in pulsar spotting, having been used to find over 500 of the small rotating stars since the first was discovered in 1967. An international team of astronomers from CSIRO, the UK, USA and Italy are now using the telescope to map pulsars 10-times faster than anyone else.

"This is thanks to the power of a new instrument on the telescope, the multibeam system, which has slashed the time it takes to scan the sky," said co-leader of the pulsar team, CSIRO's Dr Dick Manchester.

A pulsar is the collapsed core of a star, typically only 20 kilometres across, which forms when a massive star collapses under its own weight at the end of its life.

The team still has their work cut out for them -- scientists have only documented a tiny fraction of the estimated 300,000 pulsars in our galaxy. "There are many different types of pulsar, and we have only a few examples of some types," said Dr Manchester. "One of the main aims of the survey is to find more examples of these rare types and perhaps other types not even known or anticipated at present."